Assange, Wikileaks, and how I don’t give a fuck for your greater good

I keep ending up in wonderfully unproductive “debates” about the ongoing Assange case. So I just want to state a few things for the record:

Even if this is all a CIA plot …

Even if the Swedish government, well-known US government lackey that it is, is only pursuing rape allegations made against Julian Assange because they have a cunning plan to extradite him to Guantanamo Bay …

Julian Assange could have prevented this whole thing in one easy step: by not raping anyone.

I don’t really think that’s too much too ask.

But QoT! the rape apologists [when it’s An Hero of theirs] cry. Maybe those evil jezebels sent him Mixed Signals.

Then Julian Assange was perfectly capable of thinking, “Hmm. I’m not getting clear signals here. Maybe I should remove my penis and check that everyone’s on the same page.”

But QoT! This is only being done to detract from Wikileaks’ work!

Number of mentions of Julian Assange on Wikileaks’ About page: none. Not counting the newsfeed sidebars. Seems to me that any self-respecting “not-for-profit media organisation … network of dedicated volunteers around the globe” should be more than capable of getting on with things without one figurehead. I mean, Julian Assange can’t be the only smarmy self-promoting crusader for free information out there. How about getting Kim Dotcom on board?

Silly QoT. Julian is super-important. He’s the glue holding Wikileaks together / the front man / the face of Wikileaks. An attack on him is an attack on the whole endeavour, even when that attack is “being accused of rapey acts which his lawyers agree occurred”.

Sorry, defenders. If I wanted to sign up to an organisation headed by an accountability-free megalomaniac which occasionally manages to accidentally do some good in the world, I’d have stayed Catholic.

But QoT, clearly you just hate Julian Assange because he’s a man. And you just think women can never tell lies. And anyone who dares to level the slightest criticism against Our Holy Leader is a Zionist. And the real problem is that there might be a secret US plot behind all of this, and anyway rape culture is just part of the global hegemony so once we conquer that we promise to stop being rape apologists.*

~

*Not even making up ANY of those comments.

Special thanks: to the others fighting the good fight whenever this topic comes up, and in the most recent Standard comment threads that means McFlock, Pascal’s Bookie, and rosy, plus everyone who gave support to their comments, and anyone I missed once I had to stop reading the goddamn email notifications.

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11 comments

Does no one come up with the it doesn’t matter whether he’s part of wikileaks, he should be sent back to Sweden to be questioned and stand trial if need be argument?

You’re quite right in that his standing with wikileaks is irrelevant to the rape charges is irrelevant. And that he should go back to Sweden for questioning. I haven’t been following the case super close but I’m unaware of him having been tried in absentia and found guilty, even if he does give every appearance of being a bit of a sleaze.

Oh, it’s certainly come up as an argument – but the counter is inevitably that Assange shouldn’t have to run even the tiniest risk that Sweden is just pretending to pursue these allegations in order to extradite him to the US. And apparently Sweden is under some obligation to promise they won’t extradite him (what, ever? What if he rapes someone there?) before he should, as you say, turn up and answer the allegations he’s facing/attend that original police interview he ran away from.

And yet, a lot of people are willing to make excuses on that basis. Roman Polanski was another good example of otherwise on-to-it people being willing to say that producing some good films made drugging and raping a 13-year-old okay.

I can’t understand why people think Sweden is more likely to hand him over to the US than the UK is. The UK has a long and nasty track record of agreeing with US extradition requests over crimes that have a long sentence in the US and little or nothing in the UK (e.g. running a torrent tracking site). Sweden does not have such a history.

Regardless, I’m pretty sure most leftists, atheists, anti-racists and libertarians have seen this debate before on a smaller scale – women’s personal autonomy suddenly doesn’t count when the man who violated it is REALLY IMPORTANT to the CAUSE – and it’s put me off many people for life.

I love that question. I’ve been tempted to go along to some of the “Assange should be above the law” protests with a sign but I’ve struggled to come up with something concise. Maybe the above the law one. Or “Sweden: not safe for rapists”.

What a sorry, shrill piece of shit you really are. You obviously know nothing about the false accusations against Assange, nor the despicable scheming of Swedish politicians in concert with US officials to decapitate Wikileaks. If you had any guts, which you glaringly lack as a scornful misandrist, you’d allow comments that disagree with you – which, of course, you don’t. It would be a great favour to the world if you were to let your uterus dry up and spare us all the misery of having to suffer dealing with your hate-filled spawn.

Wow.
Thanks for the acknowledgement, QoT. But I gotta say that these days I never really face such visceral loathsomeness as that crap just there (not sure I ever had it that bad, but there were some incidents when I worked security). And yet you handle it not just with aplomb, but flipping it and sending it back with glee (and with interest).